


Alone

by spun809



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Angst, End of the World, F/M, Slow Burn, WIP, Zombie AU, depressed reader
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 03:46:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11153568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spun809/pseuds/spun809
Summary: You scared, alone, and tired of fighting. You never expected your life to turn into this, running from the undead and fighting to survive. Then you meet someone who saves you, not from a zombie but from yourself.





	1. Chapter 1

You crouched down, your hands prickled with the loose gravel that was pressed underneath your palms, craning your neck you did your best to try and see beyond the edge of the bumper of the car you were hiding behind. The sun was setting, it was summer time so it was probably already seven or so but there was still a faint pink and orange glow tinting the horizon and slightly illuminating the road in front of you. Still, you squinted as you scanned the area, making sure you were absolutely alone before you started to get up again. 

There was no sound, not even the croaking of frogs in the pond you had seen nearby or crickets playing their chirping tune in the high brush the lined the road, everything was still. 

The brief crack that caused you to duck for cover had to have been a twig under your chuck’s but you couldn’t risk it. These were dark times, ever since the virus had caught hold forcing urban legends to come to life, you couldn’t risk taking even a slight noise for granted. 

Minutes crept by and you stayed still for as long as you could but finally, you decided you were on your own here and pushed yourself off the ground. Making your way back onto the asphalt path laid out in front of you. As you listened to the crunch of you sneakers you thought about how strange it was to be one of the few people that were left after everything, honestly, you weren’t sure how you had managed to survive. 

It had only been two weeks after the news reports had said that the impossible had happened that the things had come to your little town. The bigger cities were in flaming ruins by that point but you were hoping that your tiny place in the middle of nowhere didn’t have enough citizens to worry about it spreading there. You had been wrong. You didn’t even hear a news report on the local channel that night, just the typical, “and the Lawrence High Cougars beat them 10-2,” and, “tomorrow we are expecting highs in the mid-50′s,” before you went to bed. 

It had happened in the middle of the night, the sound of breaking glass and screams and they had killed your entire family in one blow. You had hidden in the back of your closet, crying and waiting for them to come, but it never happened. After hours of listening to silence you had opened the door and found nothing but broken bodies and blood and from there it was a race to survive. 

You were lucky that you dad had managed to have a safe loaded to the hilt with an arsenal that would have made any Republican smile and that your earliest family memories were going to the gun range for target practice and shooting bottles out in the field behind your house. You were a good shot. Your parents had wanted you to learn to use a gun responsibly and now you were forced to use them to save your life. 

You carried the same duffle bag now that you had packed that first day, but the contents had changed slightly. The guns were still there with various boxes of ammo, you had water and some food that you kept taking out of the different stores, now vacant, that you came across. You had a few pairs of clothes and that was it. Nothing else mattered, the family pictures, your diary, you had dumped those months ago. 

“Damn it,” you cried out as your foot wobbled and fell onto the hard blacktop, you hissed at the sting as your knee scraped the ground. You tried not to focus on how your words echoed in the stillness of the oncoming night air and just how alone you truly were. 

You needed to camp out for the night. You didn’t have to worry about a tent or camping supplies, the summer kept it warm enough you didn’t need a fire and the houses were all abandoned so you just choose the first one you came across with an unlocked deal and let yourself in. Even in this post-apocalypse hellscape, you didn’t ever sleep in their beds, it was too creepy instead curling up on whatever bit of sofa or floor you felt like being on for the night. 

Tonight was different. It had been so long that you had been on your own, you were tired and you knee was still stinging you just wanted to feel close to another human so you climbed the stairs of the place you had picked out on the edge of the random town you had just made it to tonight and crawled into the first bed you saw. The room was decorated in a way that made you think it probably had belonged to a girl around your age, music posters were hung around and there were photos pinned onto a giant corkboard on one wall. You didn’t look too close. Just pulled the strange covers up to your chin and you just let yourself cry. 

Eventually, you fell into an uneasy sleep. 

“Hey,” a deep smokey voice rumbled through your half-sleeping mind, “hey, you’ve got to wake up.” 

“Just five more minutes,” you grumbled as you buried your face into the pillow. 

You felt a hand on your shoulder jerking you roughly back and forth, “seriously, get up, we’ve got to go.” 

Your head shot up and your eyes snapped open. You saw a man standing over you arm outstretched where his hand was still gripping you roughly by the shoulder. You jerked yourself away from him, on one hand, you had a mad desire to start shrieking but on the other hand, you knew all too well that any sound could make things far worse for you. You landed in the middle and made a strangled gurgle in the back of your throat in terror. 

Knowing he wasn’t a zombie wasn’t the problem, it was the fact that this was the first normal human you had seen in weeks and here they were in this random house with you. When your heartbeat slowed to a semi-normal pace, your brain started to catch up with everything that was going on. 

“Are they here?” You whispered as you watched the way the blond haired strong-jawed man was looking at the door. 

“Yeah downstairs,” he said. 

Straining you tried to see if you could hear any movement, a second later, you heard the clanging and clashing of what sounded like pots and pans slamming against the kitchen tiles. Clearly, you had company. You remembered the bag that you normally kept with you and the thought gripped you that it was currently sitting in a heap next to the door. 

“I need a gun,” you said to the stranger hoping that he would toss you one from the bag he was standing beside. 

However, at that exact moment, the door to the room crashed inward. 

“Dean, we’ve got to go now,” it was another man, he was tall with long dusty brown hair. Clearly, the new each other but you still didn’t understand why either of them was here in this room with you now.

A harsh tug on your shoulder reminded you that the stranger's hand was still attached to you. You didn’t need the reminder, your limbs started working on muscle memory alone, and you popped out of the bed. Grateful for once about the fact that you were still fully dressed from the night before. It made the quick get away much easier. 

“Alright,” you said shaking the last bit of sleep out of your mind, “what do we do?” You could have come up with a plan but you had a heavy suspicion that you were already in the midst of theirs.

“Come on,” the shorter blond haired man who had woken you said and started to walk away from the one entrance to the room you were in and going for the little window instead. 

You got the idea, you didn’t need him to explain further so as soon as he had shimmied open the pane of glass you stretched your sneaker-clad foot out onto the slanted roof below, you knew if you feel the drop was going to be one that broke a few bones at the least, so you tried to be as careful as possible as you flattened your stomach onto the roof tiles and used your toes to dig into them as much as possible. You used to be a kid that would climb trees, so you did your best to maneuver on the angled surface the same way, toes and fingers pushing into any little crack or crevice you could find, looking behind your shoulder you spotted the drain pipe connected to the side of the house and made your way slowly over to it. From there it was a careful shimmy downward until your feet hit the soft grass below. 

A few seconds later you heard a thud and the large man was now standing beside you, you stepped back to make room for his friend. 

“Are they still inside?” The taller man asked you as he made his way to stand beside the two of you. 

You scanned through the giant window on the ground floor, the view was perfect to see into the kitchen, and there they were. Two figures with pale half-rotted flesh, bumping around against the open cupboards, one of them turned just enough so you could see the milky white blur of its eyes, its face was ripped open revealing its wiggling tongue inside of its mouth. 

“Yeah, but we should get going, thanks for the help,” you said as you started to walk away from the house and the strangers unsure of what to do next since you were mainly wandering around aimlessly anymore, what with everyone you knew dead and gone, or worse. 

Striding forward you tried to get as far away from the scene as you could, but it was only seconds later you spun around at the sounds of footsteps scratching the pavement behind you.

“Hey,” the shorter stranger, he was still at least eight inches taller than you, said as he put his hand out on your arm, “where are you headed?” 

You weren’t sure what to do, a part of you wanted to divulge your entire life to this person, desperate for a little human contact. However, you couldn’t help but feel that his running into you was something more than a coincidence. You landed somewhere in the middle before things became even more awkward. 

“The next town over I guess, I can’t stay here at least,” you said as you tried to take another step forward. 

His hand stopped you, “you can’t go there, it's swarming with the things,” his green eyes were awash with the obvious horrors he must have encountered there. 

“Well,” you turned to face him, “I’ve got to go somewhere.”

“Me and my brother,” he pointed over his shoulder at the other man standing slightly behind him, “we had this idea, maybe you could come with us, my name’s Dean by the way and that’s Sam.” 

“Alright, Dean, Sam” you directed your gaze at the brown haired man, “I don’t know how you found me but just so you know I’m doing just fine on my own.” 

Obviously, it was a lie but you figured they didn’t know you well enough to see through that. You couldn’t risk getting attached to anyone else, you knew that much for certain though. It was better to leave now and go forward with the plan you had been cooking up since the last person you had known had died bloody. 

“Please,” his face seemed tight with concern, “just come with us, at least until we find a place that is safer.”

You contemplated it for a second, realizing with a growing dread, that you were faced with at least accompanying them to a place that had a little less of the dawn of the dead vibe. 

“Fine,” you said, “which way do we go?” 

You were shocked when he grabbed your hand and started to lead you back towards the house.


	2. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You have a feeling you can’t trust the two men that saved you but with only so many options you decide to follow them. When you show up at their bunker you can’t tell if you should be excited or totally freaked out, and then something happens that makes up your mind.

You couldn’t help but relax a little as his grip on your fingers tightened, with a simple twitch against your skin, and the crawling warmth of a real life human seeping into your skin it was such a comforting feeling you hadn’t even fully realized how much you had been missing it. His hand was so large that it encompassed yours completely. It was hard to even care that you were heading in a direction you fully knew was crawling with the undead.

You watched as the house you had just strode away grew larger and then he veered off onto a small street that was straight across from its front lawn, it wasn’t something you would have picked, you tried to stay on things that had enough clearance for cars to pass by on because it gave you something to hide behind. It was so narrow that you were having to walk in single file behind him but he didn’t let go of your hand. You had almost forgotten that his brother was with the two of you at all until his hand went to your shoulder and you jerked to a stop.

“Sorry,” he said at your jumpy response, “it’s just I wanted to give this to you, you forgot it back there,” he hefted your bag at you.

You couldn't believe you had left it, your only protection from the monsters that lurked just about everywhere and it one bad situation you had just forgotten it.

“Thanks,” you finally were forced to break your contact with Dean to swing the heavy canvas sack over your shoulder.

You couldn’t help but notice as you looked at the blond haired man in the leather jacket in front of you, his green eyes were watching you extra carefully measuring each slight movement and you wondered why.

“Should we get going?” You asked him as he continued to openly stare.

“Yeah,” he said as he turned back towards the little walkway, “so don’t you want to know where we’re going?” He spoke loudly so his words could travel back to where you walked a few paces behind him.

“Sure,” you thought that it wasn’t like it really mattered but figured that being polite would help to make the traveling with company easier.

You had forgotten just how hard it was to be around other people. All of the minutia that made up the human experience. The way that you had to constantly talk even when it wasn’t life and death and how you always had to pretend you cared even when you didn’t. A part of you felt that it was wasted time but you still kept up the show knowing that it was necessary for the moment if you wanted help to get to a less creature ridden area because you didn’t have so much as a map to guide you.

“...and then we’ll head left,” he was talking and you realized you had been so lost in thought you missed the entire portion where he told you your destination.

Too embarrassed to mention the fact that you hadn’t been listening you did you best to pretend that you had a clue as to where you were going, even in the stride of you step trying to fake some sort of confidence in your direction. It helped that his brother was walking in step right behind you so at the slightest hesitation he almost came crashing into your back. It was like a sheep being herded, you just didn’t like the comparison considering, at the end of being herded bad things usually happen.

You heard a faint sound off in the distance, it was familiar and reminded you of your life back before the dead had come back and started attacking people, it was a soft rushing and gurgling of water crawling over stones. There was high thick grass growing up on the side of the path you were traveling down it was just enough that you couldn’t actually verify where the noise was coming from still, you felt fairly certain you were walking along the side of a stream.

“I bet in other circumstances it was pretty beautiful here,” you pondered out loud but to no one in particular.

“It was,” Dean said as he continued to walk forward.

After the brush started to fall away you noticed there was a squat gray building lurking far off in the distance, the small walkway had finally opened up onto an actual road but you noticed something right away, there were no abandoned cars parked along it like everywhere else. It was pretty clear that even back before zombies this was not a well-traveled area.

You were so focused on walking forward you didn’t notice the arm held out in front of you until you were thrown back slightly with the strength of the muscles of the man who had found you.

“Wh..aa?” You said confused at the change in pace, it wasn’t exactly poetry.

“Sorry,” the green eyes turned to you again, “I just want to give you a heads up, the place we’re taking you, it might seem a little strange at first, but just so you know like I was saying, me and Sam we know it’s safe.”

A strange sensation swept over you as you continued to study the lines of his face, it was almost like you were a rabbit and you were walking straight into a snare and the wolf was lurking right in view but the carrot was so tempting you couldn’t turn away. It was bad vibes all around and your stomach clenched painfully. A thought came to you.

“How did you know that I was in that house?” You asked suddenly you felt like it was dire that you knew if it was truly a coincidence that they had stumbled into the same house you had slept in.

“This town,” he hesitated choosing each of his words carefully, “it’s the closest one to the place we’re staying in.” He stopped seeming uncertain of how he should continue and his eyes focused on his brother standing beside you.

Sam took over from there, “we uh, we have to get supplies from time to time and it was just a random thing that we spotted you last night going into that house, we haven’t seen any living person in so long we decided to watch you.”

You looked between the two of them, something still seemed a little off, but you did your best to assure yourself that it was nothing more than the fact that they were essentially strangers to you, handsome and well trained in escape strategies which were helpful now, but strangers you didn’t trust fully nonetheless.

“Fine,” you said not fully convinced that it actually was.

Dean started to lead the way again, you noticed the gray building was getting taller as you walked in what was an obvious line towards it. It looked like a cross between a bomb shelter and some sort of factory, which seemed almost like a reasonable choice to stay in during what could only be called the end of the world.

You decided to try some more friendly conversation that might ease the newfound tension between you and the men you were walking with as you closed in on the building, “so how did you guys find this place?”

“We kind of knew about it before all of this happened,” Sam said from behind you.

“That’s lucky.”

“Yeah,” he agreed but his tone was clipped.

You saw the edges of the cement structure start to solidify, an outline of a door becoming quickly visible, it was substantially larger than you had expected it to be. Dean was reaching into his back pocket and pulled out something gold and the size of a deck of cards, and he slipped the little box open and grabbed what had to be some super old fashioned key. As you walked up to the door you watched him fit it into the lock and the metal squealed as he pushed it forward. You hesitated as he stepped inside but you felt Sam’s gentle hand against you back guiding you inside. You took a deep breath and walked in.

“Holy shit,” you said as you came to the top of an iron staircase that spiraled downwards and opened up onto what looked like a cross between a military hideout and a museum.

Dean chuckled as he descended the stairs in front of you. It took you a moment but little detail started to sink in, there was electricity going inside of the place, the lights were on and there was the unmistakable humming of a fan.

You turned back towards Sam, “does this place still have water and everything?” You were astonished, civilized society had all but broken down with no one to run the facilities that powered it. Here it was hard to tell that the Earth had ever been touched by tragedy.

He smiled and it only encouraged you strange thought that maybe everything up until now was some sort of dream, “Yep, everything works down here,” before you had a chance to ask the question on your mind he gave you an answer, “we don’t know why.”

The blond man grabbed your hand again, this time you couldn’t help but note that as he took it he made a show at winding his fingers in between yours, and he helped you off the last step. You could feel the callouses of his fingers brushing the inside of your palm. His eyes were sparkling as he looked at your joyful expression.

“Want me to show you to your room?”

All you could do was nod.

He led you through hall after hallway, there were so many rooms and doors you couldn’t help but think of a literal labyrinth. Finally, he started to slow down and then came to a stop, there was a tiny etching on a brass plate attached to the door with some strange triangular shapes intertwining. It was ominous and almost seemed like something mystical but you couldn’t help the way the thought drifted from the symbol to the room that he opened to you. 

It had been a long time since you saw a bed that didn’t belong to someone else, a room that wasn’t pre-designed for someone else, that you were just experiencing for a moment. This place was well furnished but neutral, no pictures of a family reminding you of what you had lost, or posters that showed nothing more than a world destroyed. 

You turned back towards Dean, “do I get to stay in here?” You couldn’t help the giant grin on your face at the thought. 

“Yep,” he matched your smile, his teeth sparkling white and perfect, “my room is right next door if you need anything.” 

You were ready for bed, so you just gave him a quick hug, not caring if it seemed strange and let your body flop onto the matrasse. 

You didn’t even know you had fallen asleep until you woke with a start your whole body jerking upright.

“Sam, you need to be quiet,” Dean’s voice strained with his attempt at quieting their conversation.

“No, Dean, you should have told her everything, when doesn’t this kind of thing end up backfiring on us?” 

Your blood felt like it had taken on a polar chill, and you strained to hear more of the argument unfolding in the room next to yours, your fingers digging into the edge of the mattress with the strange effort of trying to get your ears to work better.

“...not like before,” Dean’s voice was so hushed it was hard to tell exactly what he was saying. 

“Dude, tell her in the morning, or I swear I will, one way or the other.” 

You heard a door slam shut and then heavy footsteps in the hallway outside your temporary room. You knew it would be impossible to get any more sleep tonight. Instead, you laid back and stared at the ceiling wondering about what exactly could be so horrible that in the midst of hell on Earth Dean would feel like he would have to hide it from you. Your whole body shook and you tried to crawl underneath more of the blankets to warm yourself back up. 

You couldn’t wait for the morning to get the hell out of here.


End file.
